<center>[ Page 1 ] - [ Page 2 ] - [ Page 3 ]</center>
Character system
<center>"Every aspect of the game should have choice and consequence. Even choices like picking your character's stats."
Gavin Carter, a practical joker</center>
<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Fallout's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck) was tweaked to allow any character to survive and beat the game. The consequences of this choice are that stats are less important, all characters' combat worthiness is about the same, and returns on stat investments are greatly decreased. Some examples:
Fallout 1 & 2:
hit points = 15 + (2 x EN) + ST
action points = AG/2 + 5
carry weight = 25 + (25 x STR)
skill points = 5 + (INT x 2)
Fallout 3:
hit points = 100 + (END x 20)
action points = 65 + (AG x 2)
carry weight = 150 + (STR*10)
skill points = 10 + INT
So, let's compare average values (5) with high (8).
Fallout 1 & 2 (5 vs 8):
HP - 30 vs 39
AP - 7 vs 9 (the difference is, basically, an extra attack per turn, which is huge)
Weight: 150 vs 225 (50% more death dealing hardware and ammo)
SP: 15 vs 21 (40% increase)
Fallout 3 (5 vs 8):
HP - 200 vs 260
AP - 75 vs 81 (practically no difference; you need to put 3 extra stat points into Agility to get an extra shot with a pistol)
Weight - 200 vs 230 (15% more death dealing hardware; ammo, including missiles and nukes, is weightless)
SP - 15 vs 18 (20% increase)
<table align="left" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Other than that, above average stats add dialogue lines and determine relevant starting skills' values (+2 per stat point). Instead of 18 skills featured in Fallout, we get only 13, but many are very useful and matter a lot. Skills go up to 100 and can't be increased further even by perks or books. You get 6 combat skills: Small Guns, Big Guns, Energy Guns, Melee, Unarmed, and Explosives (which combines former Throwing and Traps) and 7 non-combat skills, out of which 5 are very, very useful:
Speech – used a LOT in the game. It won’t get you through the game, unfortunately, but when talking is involved, it’s good to have a developed Speech skill. It works in a simple, but very effective way. You are all familiar with a typical RPG situation: you need something from NPC X, but in order to get it, you need to do something first. Well, Fallout 3 Speech helps you get what you need without any extra work. It also lets you lie to people and claim that you did what they asked you to. I’ll get back to this later.
Sneak – If frontal assault aint your style, you can sneak and/or do some silent killing, courtesy of a silenced pistol and Mr. Sandman perk (kill silently any human or ghoul while they are sleeping). Sneaking isn’t a viable alternative to combat and if you are planning to do the main quest, then some killing is unavoidable. The sneaking mechanics remain awfully simple, but are effective. There are no noise or alertness indicators, but you can hear the noise you make if you step on an old tin can or bump a shopping trolley. You go from Hidden to Caution (people get that uneasy feeling that someone’s out there) to Danger (nuclear catapults are being aimed at you). The Stealth Boy (a cloaking field) will greatly increase your chances to remain undetected, but like all invisibility spells wears off after a period of time.
Lockpick – the game has a lot of locks to pick, so don’t skip this skill if you like finding even more junk. Locks difficulty ranges from 25 to 100. If you beat the skill check, you get to play a well-done mini-game. Overall, it’s a very well executed system and probably the best mini-game involving system I’ve ever seen.
Science – the art of hacking all those computers I’ve mentioned earlier. Sometimes science is an alternative to lockpicking (say, there is a locked safe that could be lockpicked, but can also be opened via a nearby terminal), but in most cases science will grant you access to all kinds of interesting files, so if you like reading different bits and pieces, science is a must have skill. Hacking difficulty also ranges from 25 to 100 and leads to a word guessing mini-game. You get several guesses and if you fail to figure out the right word (which isn’t very hard), the computer gets locked. However, you can easily “log out” if you aren’t getting close and start again without any penalties.
Repair – you can combine two identical items of poor quality into one item of higher quality. You pick an item, click on another, and it’s done. No fancy stuff like swapping gun parts, which would have worked well with the “hunt for better loot” sandbox aspect. It’s relatively easy to find all the best gear and once you got it, one of the reasons to keep exploring is gone. The bronze, iron, steel, etc progression of the previous Bethesda games should have been replaced by a “different manufacturers” system like the one that worked so well in Space Rangers.
Missed opportunities aside, the repair system works surprisingly well. Most items you find are in very poor conditions. Looking at a huge pile of armor sets and guns after a battle is a bit jarring at first, but once you reduce the pile to a few decent armor sets and guns (thus saving you a hauling trip or two – easing the drudgery for OCD pack rat types), you quickly see the beauty of the system.
<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Barter and Medicine aren't very important, but keep in mind that you won't end up a millionaire in FO3, and if aren't planning to invest in Repair, most of your income would be spent of fixing your equipment. I did see at least two Medicine dialogue checks in the game, so it's possible that it's more useful than it appears.
Every time you level up you can choose a perk, improving your abilities (get more skill points when you level up, increase a stat, gain skill bonuses) or granting you new ones (the female only Black Widow perk, for example, gives you extra dialogue options with men and damage bonus against all penis-carrying club members).
Despite the level cap, it’s possible to max 4-5 skills somewhat early and lose another reason to explore, but overall, they’re done well and are a positive aspect of the game.
Main Quest
<center>“God, is this too inaccessible for console players?”
Emil Pagliarulo, a console players’ rights advocate
"Filtering through earth removes essentially all of the fallout particles and more of the dissolved radioactive material than does boiling-water distillation... In areas of heavy fallout, about 99% of the radioactivity in water could be removed by filtering it through ordinary earth." Nuclear War Survival Skills handbook</center>
The main quest is one of the game's biggest weaknesses. It doesn't make sense. The water contains radiation and thus isn't safe to drink. Maybe if people stopped playing with nuclear catapults and blowing up nuclear cars, the situation would improve… Anyway, even though it's relatively easy to purify radioactive water - see the quote above - top East Coast scientists, including your dad, have been trying to find a much more complex and unnecessary solution, known as Project Purity. They fail miserably at first, then you dad enters that "shall never be opened" Vault 101, raises you, but after watching a Blues Brothers rerun, decides to put the band together again and leaves the vault. You have no choice but to follow him, so the "shall never be opened" vault is opened again.
You spend some time searching for your father, asking everyone "have you seen my father, the middle-aged guy?", and that's the best part of the main quest and the game. Once you're reunited, the game hops on rails and takes you on a magical tour through one of the most idiotic game endings in the history of video games. Investing into a pair of good writers and story-tellers should be the top priority for Bethesda. The drop in quality, comparing the game to Daggerfall and Morrowind, is very noticeable and painful to experience.
Side quests and dialogues
<center>“Dialogue wasn't a battle we wanted to pick. There were other things that were more important for us to spend time and energy on… we just don't have unlimited monkeys and typewriters.”
Pete Hines, a spokesperson for the Reading Foundation.</center>
Side quest design is one of the strongest and most enjoyable aspects of the game. You have choices, consequences, multiple, often very different solutions, skill- and stat-checks, effective speech options, NPC reactions, etc. This design is very good (suffering only from poor writing) and I can only hope that it will be used extensively in future Bethesda titles.
Now, let me throw some quest examples at you to illustrate my points and explain all the praise. Needless to say, these are spoilers, so scroll down a bit if you don’t want to know.
One of the first Megaton quests is Blood Ties. It starts as a generic “deliver a letter” quest but quickly grows into something more complex. You discover that the family the letter was addressed to has been murdered (a successful Medicine check reveals the cause of their death) and their child is missing. Local residents inform you that a local gang may be responsible. You are given 3 possible locations where the gang could be found. No hand-holding. So, now the “deliver a letter” quest turns into a “save a kid” quest. Once you find the gang, you are free to attack them and save the kid. Or you can talk to them. Entering through the gate unmolested requires a bribe, or the above mentioned letter (it’s possible to initiate the quest without having the letter), or high speech, or a certain perk. When you talk to the leader, it transpires that it was the kid who killed his parents (which is a nice and unexpected twist) and the gang is helping him to control his urges. At this point, what you do is up to you. You can leave the kid with the gang or take him back (if you think this would be wise). You can still kill the gang ending the settlement’s problems with them, or you can broker a deal (protection for supplies).
<table align="left" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Another, simpler, but more interactive example is the Big Town (no, it’s another 5-house settlement) quest. Once you’ve saved two local residents, you are informed that super mutants are a-coming. You can run away leaving them to their fate, you can kill the super mutants for them, you can teach the locals how to shoot if you’re proficient enough with Small Guns, you can fix a few broken robots with your Repair skill to defend the settlement, you can lay down mines, and you can use your Medicine skill to heal a local resident to help in the upcoming fight.
The previously mentioned android independence quest is probably one of the best and most interesting quests in the game, but you can discover that on your own.
The only problem, and it’s a big problem, is the writing. At best it’s passable, at worst it’s horrible, especially when it comes to dialogue stat checks. It feels like the writer had no clue what an intelligent or charismatic or perceptive person might say, so your intelligent lines often look absolutely idiotic.
I fight the good fight with my voice!
[intelligence] Ah, so you fight the good fight with your voice, eh?
I can see that you are very smart.
You see, Pete, that’s what happens when you think that any monkey can write dialogues. With a better storyline and well written quests it could have been a great game, despite any other flaws. Considering how solid the quest design is, not fighting the “dialogue battle” is unforgivable.
<center>[ Page 1 ] - [ Page 2 ] - [ Page 3 ]</center>
Character system
<center>"Every aspect of the game should have choice and consequence. Even choices like picking your character's stats."
Gavin Carter, a practical joker</center>
<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Fallout's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck) was tweaked to allow any character to survive and beat the game. The consequences of this choice are that stats are less important, all characters' combat worthiness is about the same, and returns on stat investments are greatly decreased. Some examples:Fallout 1 & 2:
hit points = 15 + (2 x EN) + ST
action points = AG/2 + 5
carry weight = 25 + (25 x STR)
skill points = 5 + (INT x 2)
Fallout 3:
hit points = 100 + (END x 20)
action points = 65 + (AG x 2)
carry weight = 150 + (STR*10)
skill points = 10 + INT
So, let's compare average values (5) with high (8).
Fallout 1 & 2 (5 vs 8):
HP - 30 vs 39
AP - 7 vs 9 (the difference is, basically, an extra attack per turn, which is huge)
Weight: 150 vs 225 (50% more death dealing hardware and ammo)
SP: 15 vs 21 (40% increase)
Fallout 3 (5 vs 8):
HP - 200 vs 260
AP - 75 vs 81 (practically no difference; you need to put 3 extra stat points into Agility to get an extra shot with a pistol)
Weight - 200 vs 230 (15% more death dealing hardware; ammo, including missiles and nukes, is weightless)
SP - 15 vs 18 (20% increase)
<table align="left" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Other than that, above average stats add dialogue lines and determine relevant starting skills' values (+2 per stat point). Instead of 18 skills featured in Fallout, we get only 13, but many are very useful and matter a lot. Skills go up to 100 and can't be increased further even by perks or books. You get 6 combat skills: Small Guns, Big Guns, Energy Guns, Melee, Unarmed, and Explosives (which combines former Throwing and Traps) and 7 non-combat skills, out of which 5 are very, very useful:Speech – used a LOT in the game. It won’t get you through the game, unfortunately, but when talking is involved, it’s good to have a developed Speech skill. It works in a simple, but very effective way. You are all familiar with a typical RPG situation: you need something from NPC X, but in order to get it, you need to do something first. Well, Fallout 3 Speech helps you get what you need without any extra work. It also lets you lie to people and claim that you did what they asked you to. I’ll get back to this later.
Sneak – If frontal assault aint your style, you can sneak and/or do some silent killing, courtesy of a silenced pistol and Mr. Sandman perk (kill silently any human or ghoul while they are sleeping). Sneaking isn’t a viable alternative to combat and if you are planning to do the main quest, then some killing is unavoidable. The sneaking mechanics remain awfully simple, but are effective. There are no noise or alertness indicators, but you can hear the noise you make if you step on an old tin can or bump a shopping trolley. You go from Hidden to Caution (people get that uneasy feeling that someone’s out there) to Danger (nuclear catapults are being aimed at you). The Stealth Boy (a cloaking field) will greatly increase your chances to remain undetected, but like all invisibility spells wears off after a period of time.
Lockpick – the game has a lot of locks to pick, so don’t skip this skill if you like finding even more junk. Locks difficulty ranges from 25 to 100. If you beat the skill check, you get to play a well-done mini-game. Overall, it’s a very well executed system and probably the best mini-game involving system I’ve ever seen.
Science – the art of hacking all those computers I’ve mentioned earlier. Sometimes science is an alternative to lockpicking (say, there is a locked safe that could be lockpicked, but can also be opened via a nearby terminal), but in most cases science will grant you access to all kinds of interesting files, so if you like reading different bits and pieces, science is a must have skill. Hacking difficulty also ranges from 25 to 100 and leads to a word guessing mini-game. You get several guesses and if you fail to figure out the right word (which isn’t very hard), the computer gets locked. However, you can easily “log out” if you aren’t getting close and start again without any penalties.
Repair – you can combine two identical items of poor quality into one item of higher quality. You pick an item, click on another, and it’s done. No fancy stuff like swapping gun parts, which would have worked well with the “hunt for better loot” sandbox aspect. It’s relatively easy to find all the best gear and once you got it, one of the reasons to keep exploring is gone. The bronze, iron, steel, etc progression of the previous Bethesda games should have been replaced by a “different manufacturers” system like the one that worked so well in Space Rangers.
Missed opportunities aside, the repair system works surprisingly well. Most items you find are in very poor conditions. Looking at a huge pile of armor sets and guns after a battle is a bit jarring at first, but once you reduce the pile to a few decent armor sets and guns (thus saving you a hauling trip or two – easing the drudgery for OCD pack rat types), you quickly see the beauty of the system.
<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Barter and Medicine aren't very important, but keep in mind that you won't end up a millionaire in FO3, and if aren't planning to invest in Repair, most of your income would be spent of fixing your equipment. I did see at least two Medicine dialogue checks in the game, so it's possible that it's more useful than it appears.Every time you level up you can choose a perk, improving your abilities (get more skill points when you level up, increase a stat, gain skill bonuses) or granting you new ones (the female only Black Widow perk, for example, gives you extra dialogue options with men and damage bonus against all penis-carrying club members).
Despite the level cap, it’s possible to max 4-5 skills somewhat early and lose another reason to explore, but overall, they’re done well and are a positive aspect of the game.
Main Quest
<center>“God, is this too inaccessible for console players?”
Emil Pagliarulo, a console players’ rights advocate
"Filtering through earth removes essentially all of the fallout particles and more of the dissolved radioactive material than does boiling-water distillation... In areas of heavy fallout, about 99% of the radioactivity in water could be removed by filtering it through ordinary earth." Nuclear War Survival Skills handbook</center>
The main quest is one of the game's biggest weaknesses. It doesn't make sense. The water contains radiation and thus isn't safe to drink. Maybe if people stopped playing with nuclear catapults and blowing up nuclear cars, the situation would improve… Anyway, even though it's relatively easy to purify radioactive water - see the quote above - top East Coast scientists, including your dad, have been trying to find a much more complex and unnecessary solution, known as Project Purity. They fail miserably at first, then you dad enters that "shall never be opened" Vault 101, raises you, but after watching a Blues Brothers rerun, decides to put the band together again and leaves the vault. You have no choice but to follow him, so the "shall never be opened" vault is opened again.
You spend some time searching for your father, asking everyone "have you seen my father, the middle-aged guy?", and that's the best part of the main quest and the game. Once you're reunited, the game hops on rails and takes you on a magical tour through one of the most idiotic game endings in the history of video games. Investing into a pair of good writers and story-tellers should be the top priority for Bethesda. The drop in quality, comparing the game to Daggerfall and Morrowind, is very noticeable and painful to experience.
Side quests and dialogues
<center>“Dialogue wasn't a battle we wanted to pick. There were other things that were more important for us to spend time and energy on… we just don't have unlimited monkeys and typewriters.”
Pete Hines, a spokesperson for the Reading Foundation.</center>
Side quest design is one of the strongest and most enjoyable aspects of the game. You have choices, consequences, multiple, often very different solutions, skill- and stat-checks, effective speech options, NPC reactions, etc. This design is very good (suffering only from poor writing) and I can only hope that it will be used extensively in future Bethesda titles.
Now, let me throw some quest examples at you to illustrate my points and explain all the praise. Needless to say, these are spoilers, so scroll down a bit if you don’t want to know.
One of the first Megaton quests is Blood Ties. It starts as a generic “deliver a letter” quest but quickly grows into something more complex. You discover that the family the letter was addressed to has been murdered (a successful Medicine check reveals the cause of their death) and their child is missing. Local residents inform you that a local gang may be responsible. You are given 3 possible locations where the gang could be found. No hand-holding. So, now the “deliver a letter” quest turns into a “save a kid” quest. Once you find the gang, you are free to attack them and save the kid. Or you can talk to them. Entering through the gate unmolested requires a bribe, or the above mentioned letter (it’s possible to initiate the quest without having the letter), or high speech, or a certain perk. When you talk to the leader, it transpires that it was the kid who killed his parents (which is a nice and unexpected twist) and the gang is helping him to control his urges. At this point, what you do is up to you. You can leave the kid with the gang or take him back (if you think this would be wise). You can still kill the gang ending the settlement’s problems with them, or you can broker a deal (protection for supplies).
<table align="left" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Another, simpler, but more interactive example is the Big Town (no, it’s another 5-house settlement) quest. Once you’ve saved two local residents, you are informed that super mutants are a-coming. You can run away leaving them to their fate, you can kill the super mutants for them, you can teach the locals how to shoot if you’re proficient enough with Small Guns, you can fix a few broken robots with your Repair skill to defend the settlement, you can lay down mines, and you can use your Medicine skill to heal a local resident to help in the upcoming fight. The previously mentioned android independence quest is probably one of the best and most interesting quests in the game, but you can discover that on your own.
The only problem, and it’s a big problem, is the writing. At best it’s passable, at worst it’s horrible, especially when it comes to dialogue stat checks. It feels like the writer had no clue what an intelligent or charismatic or perceptive person might say, so your intelligent lines often look absolutely idiotic.
I fight the good fight with my voice!
[intelligence] Ah, so you fight the good fight with your voice, eh?
I can see that you are very smart.
You see, Pete, that’s what happens when you think that any monkey can write dialogues. With a better storyline and well written quests it could have been a great game, despite any other flaws. Considering how solid the quest design is, not fighting the “dialogue battle” is unforgivable.
<center>[ Page 1 ] - [ Page 2 ] - [ Page 3 ]</center>